


Depths

by Rose Argent (roseargent)



Category: Tokyo Babylon
Genre: Bad Decisions, Case Fic, Dream Sex, Dreams and Nightmares, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:34:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28134018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roseargent/pseuds/Rose%20Argent
Summary: Subaru leaves Tokyo for a case, but finds that a change of scenery brings no relief from the hole in his heart.
Relationships: Sakurazuka Seishirou/Sumeragi Subaru
Comments: 8
Kudos: 19
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Depths

**Author's Note:**

  * For [warfare](https://archiveofourown.org/users/warfare/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy the story! 
> 
> Writing fic set between TB and X is always interesting, because Subaru and Seishiro's big confrontations are both behind and ahead of them, but Seishiro is still very much on Subaru's mind (and he's basically a complete disaster because of it). There's also the question of just when Subaru realised what his own deepest wish is--I think he knew well before X, and I tried to show him starting to come to that understanding here. (Seishiro, of course, couldn't find his own true feelings with a map and a compass). I hope I centred their relationship enough, even if the story focuses more on Subaru himself!

The blinking light on Subaru's answering machine drew his attention as soon as he entered the apartment. He hadn't been back to the apartment in two--three?--days, and as much as he wanted to collapse onto his bed and sleep, he knew he needed to check his messages. Most of them were probably from Grandmother, about some job or another. She sent him more jobs lately, claiming that if he wasn't in school he could make time for more work. He knew it was her way of checking on him without coming out and saying it, pointed nudges that didn't quite open the door to things they couldn't speak of. Things _he_ couldn't speak of if he was being honest with himself.

He tried to avoid that.

Four messages. Subaru rubbed his face and winced a little. He'd gone without checking for too long, worried Grandmother too much. 

Except as the messages played, Subaru realised that it was worse than that--it was a job that came with a body count, and one that grew between the first message and the last. Sitting down a little too hard, he took a deep breath. Someone had died because he had been preoccupied. And he could tell himself that stopping Seishiro would save more lives than just one, but that thought was a load of crap on so many levels it wasn't even worth picking apart.

He shook off the crushing guilt, for now. There'd be time for regrets, both new and old, later--now was the time to do what he could to prevent _more_ deaths. 

The last message had a number for him to contact the police officer in charge directly, and he called it without waiting even a moment longer, any hope of sleep forgotten. The intense relief--and complete lack of censure--in the detective's voice when Subaru introduced himself dug the knife a little deeper. The man probably thought Subaru had been busy with other important cases, and was openly glad that the 13th head of the Sumeragi clan had made time for him at all. Subaru was on a train within the hour, taking only enough time for a shower and a change of clothes--he wouldn't exactly have inspired confidence, the way he'd looked. 

(Hokuto would have known how to dress him to look impressive. Mostly he just tried not to look like the obsessed semi-vagrant he was turning into.)

A little belatedly, Subaru checked on the contents of the bag he'd grabbed on the way out the door. His formal working robes were in there, though he wasn't sure this set even still fit after the last bit of height he'd put on (and the last bit of weight he'd lost). The ceremonial knife, ofuda, and other actually important tools were all in good order, at least. 

The urgency of the case (because he had waited so long to do something as simple as checking his messages) had thrown everything into chaos. Without the usual information packet that came with a formal request, Subaru wished that he'd taken the time to print out some articles on the case before bolting out the door. From what the detective had told him there'd been a series of suspicious drownings in the same small lake--barely more than a pond--within the last six months. The location of the lake could be a problem. There'd been enough suicides in that forest that it was almost sure to have a number of unquiet spirits about, not just the one he was actually looking for. It was nothing on the scale of Aokigahara (even Subaru wouldn't--couldn't--work _there_ alone), but it would be a complication. It was also why it had taken months and multiple deaths before the police department called in the Sumeragi family's kind of help--they'd assumed the deaths were suicides until one body showed up bearing signs of a struggle. 

That was about all Subaru had to go on, for now, and it wasn't enough to make any real decisions. He didn't know why they thought it was a supernatural case, he didn't know anything about the victims, he had no way of guessing if it was a spirit or a curse or something else entirely. Closing his eyes, he let his mind drift. He hadn't intended to sleep, only to rest his eyes, but his tired body had other ideas.

\--

He stepped through the doors and into the void. The tree loomed before him, dominating the empty space where a hospital room should have been. Seishiro stood before him, but not the Seishiro he knew.

For the hundredth time and for the first time he stood and did nothing as Seishiro revealed the truth. Cried uselessly as Seishiro broke his arm. Lay there as Seishiro kicked him until he coughed up blood. Wept as Seishiro prepared to kill him. 

The cry of a shikigami echoed in the nothingness and it shattered around him, Grandmother sacrificing her health to save him. To do what he should have done himself. 

All he could do was lie there and cry. Just like he did every time.

_No._

He stepped through the doors and into the void. 

His hands formed a spell before Seishiro finished speaking, but the Sakurazukamori deflected it easily. This was his space, his power was the greater here. Seishiro had been wrong about that much--Subaru couldn't break the spell, no matter how he resisted. 

(Maybe he didn't want to. Maybe he deserved this.) 

The fight was doomed from the start, and Subaru felt Seishiro's hand plunge into his chest. He might have screamed, but all he could hear was Seishiro's voice as he leaned in and kissed his cheek, whispering against his skin, "Farewell, Sumeragi Subaru."

_No._

He stepped through the doors into the void.

Biding his time, he listened to Seishiro speak, listened to the damning words that broke his heart and ground the pieces into dust beneath Seishiro's heel. He cried, because he couldn't not. 

Seishiro took his hand, and the gloves that had never protected him shredded into nothing. 

Point-blank he cast his spell. It was messy, poorly formed--Grandmother would be ashamed to see him cast something so raw. But Seishiro's head jerked back, and a line of blood opened on his cheek.

Not enough. He wasn't strong enough here. Seishiro smiled that cruel smile at him and used the very same spell but better, stronger, faster. "You're under my spell. But it's adorable that you try." 

Again, the same sequence of events. Subaru felt his arm break. His ribs. Every kick was like he remembered it. 

_No._

He stepped through the doors into the void.

There had to be a way. An action Subaru could take that would change the outcome. But again and again he failed, because the moment he stepped into this space he was in Seishiro's power. 

(He'd been bespelled for seven years, and never known it. He'd lost the bet. This moment was too late, far too late to change anything. But still he tried.)

He kicked. He bit. Cast spell after spell. Seishiro only smiled at him, unmoved by Subaru's struggles. 

(Because this already happened. You can't change anything here.)

_No._

\--

Subaru woke with a start, his skin cold and clammy with sweat. He glanced around the train, but none of the other passengers was looking at him. No one was conspicuously avoiding his gaze, either--he must not have made a sound. 

In other small blessings, he hadn't missed his stop. He tried to relax for the remaining few minutes of the journey, but the dream clung to him along with the sickly feel of fear sweat drying on his skin. 

There was a car and driver waiting for him at the station. Usually he'd expect a junior officer, but either the station was exceptionally small and everyone else was busy or they were more than a little desperate because it was Detective Tamura himself behind the wheel. 

"Do you mind if we discuss the case on the way?" Detective Tamura was all business now, all but vibrating with a need to be doing something. Subaru knew that feeling all too well.

"Of course, that's why I'm here." Once, Subaru would have smiled, tried to be reassuring and friendly. Now he just tried to look professional, and not like he was haunted by the familiar nightmare. If the detective hadn't been so concerned with the case, Subaru suspected it wouldn't have worked at all--he felt frayed at the edges, the disturbed sleep having made him more tired, rather than less. 

Tamura handed Subaru a thick folder as soon as he was in the car with his seatbelt fastened, and he talked as Subaru flipped through the stack of photographs and case notes. 

"As you can see, all the victims have been males. The ages vary from late teens to late thirties, so we had a hard time finding a pattern, at first."

Subaru felt his eyebrows creep up as he got to that part of the notes. "They were all unfaithful?" Definitely the sort of thing that could set off a vengeful spirit, though usually their grudges tended to be specific and personal, in that case. It was also something that could set off a purely human killer. 

"We looked into their wives and girlfriends first, but there's no evidence that any of them are involved. Or not in any way we can figure out." Tamura's eye twitched and his grip on the steering wheel tightened. "But right up until the sixth victim I was still pretty sure this was a normal case. Or, not normal. We haven't had _one_ murder for decades before this, now we have seven. But human. Something that could be resolved with solid police work." 

Subaru recognised the frustration and anger in Tamura's voice. Police were usually a lot more reluctant to call in an onmyouji than, say, real estate agents wanting a house cleansed so they could sell it; Subaru suspected it bruised their pride to look for outside help. He flipped to the information on the sixth victim. There were more thorough photographs of the scene than with most of the previous victims, since by this point the deaths were already being treated as crimes. Nothing stood out to Subaru, except that the lighting seemed off, somehow, until he got to a closeup shot of the victim's right hand.

The dead man was clutching a lock of brilliantly green hair. Subaru flipped through a few more pages, but found no reports detailing tests performed on the hair. "You couldn't match the hair to a suspect?"

"We couldn't do _anything_ with the hair. As soon as we got the body out of that clearing the hair just. Disappeared." Tamura sounded genuinely offended by the idea that evidence could just up and vanish. "Multiple officers saw it happen. It wasn't misplaced, it was just gone."

Remaining silent for a moment, trying to cover his surprise, Subaru looked more closely at that photograph. If the hair had been illusion, it shouldn't have appeared in the photographs at all. It had been physically real, something anyone could see and touch regardless of spiritual sensitivity, but only temporarily. 

This was out of Subaru's expertise. He'd studied ayakashi and how to deal with them, of course. There was no reason he _couldn't_ deal with something that wasn't of human origin, it just wasn't common in Tokyo, the press of humanity driving most ayakashi out to the fringes. To places like this, which barely looked like the same country as Tokyo despite being only an hour away.

The sensible thing to do would be to consult with experts who had more experience with ayakashi than Subaru did. But Detective Tamura had swallowed his pride to ask for help, and Subaru's delay in responding had already cost one life. Grandmother wouldn't have passed the case along without good reason, wouldn't have sent him this far out of the city without cause (he had the thought that maybe getting him away from Tokyo for a little while _was_ the cause, but he mentally waved it away). 

"If you don't mind, I'd like to head straight to the scene." Subaru closed the folder. The faster way to figure out just what he was dealing with was to go and see for himself.

Detective Tamura hesitated briefly, then asked, "You don't need to see the bodies? Uh. Talk to their spirits or something?" 

"There might not be any spirits to speak to. Even if there are, I'm not sure what they could tell me that would be more useful than seeing it for myself." If their spirits had lingered, as murder victims often did, he could send them on their way, but it would be easier if he could reassure them that their murderer was dealt with. 

He knew a little too much about how hard it was to move on, otherwise.

"If you're sure." Tamura turned the car around, heading out of the town centre and towards the forest looming in the waning afternoon light. The relief in his voice made Subaru feel like he'd made the right call, despite the nagging worry that he was moving too fast.

There was still daylight left when they reached the end of the road, but it was at a low enough angle that it wasn't going to do much good past the first few rows of trees. Police tape was stretched across the road, and signs warning against entry were hung from the trees closest to the path. But if whatever was in there could lure men in, signs wouldn't do much good. "We have to walk from here. It's not far." Detective Tamura took a flashlight out of the trunk of the car, and Subaru grabbed his bag. He wasn't likely to have time to set up a proper ritual tonight, but he was getting better at working on the fly, relying on his shiki and quick-cast spells. The kinds of things he'd need to fight the Sakurazukamori. 

(He wasn't strong enough yet to fight Seishiro and _win_ , not yet, but that didn't matter if he couldn't find the man, anyway.)

Tamura was right about it not being far to the clearing--it wasn't a big forest, for all that it was dense and old. But it was a much shorter walk than Subaru expected in more ways than one--there wasn't a single unquiet spirit to delay him along the way. Whatever was in the clearing, it wasn't good company.

It was dim in the clearing, the sun's light not reaching it and the moon not yet high enough to matter. Subaru carefully made his way towards the lake at the far end, sending his shiki on ahead to scout it out. It really wasn't much to speak of, but the water was an oddly frigid-looking steel colour in the dim lighting. 

Subaru paused a few metres from the little lake. He could set up a barrier here, but it would limit what he could do to coax the spirit--or whatever it was--out to talk. Not knowing exactly what it was, a straight exorcism had a good chance of using up his energy for nothing. The point of coming here right away was to figure out what was in the lake to start with--he could make a plan once he knew what he was dealing with. 

That was what he told himself as got closer to the lake. 

Nothing moved, there was no sign of anything there except for the persistent pall hanging over the place.

A cold, wet hand snapped out, fast as a striking snake, wrapping around his ankle and pulling.

("You're too reckless!" Hokuto scolded him in his head as the water closed over him, deeper and colder than it should be). 

Water was not a friend to paper ofuda, but Subaru's shiki made a vicious dive at the creature's head before dissolving in a cloud of ink. Subaru's hands were already moving, fingers curling into forms that were second nature as he readied a spell--it would lose some power with the words only mouthed silently and not truly spoken, but it should free him from the ayakashi's grip. The creature looked up at him, all sharp features and pale, green-tinted skin, and surprise disrupted Subaru's spell. 

She wasn't an ayakashi at all, or not one he recognised. Twisted by rage as it was, the face before him clearly belonged to a foreign girl. 

He'd been pulled under so fast he hadn't had a chance to take in much of a breath, and the instant's delay meant Subaru was out of time. His lungs ached with the need for air, the spirit's rage--so very clear now, here under the water--beat at his defenses, and he was _so tired_. 

_I can't die here! I have to see him again!_

The thought streaked through Subaru's fading consciousness like a meteor, and in his dimming vision something unreadable flashed across the spirit's face. She let go of his ankle.

The surface was too far away, the lake grown strange and bottomless, but Subaru kicked with what strength he had left. He took a breath half a heartbeat too soon, a trickle of water making it into his lungs along with the precious air, and he coughed violently as he reached the shore. 

A hand wrapped around his wrist, and he almost lashed out until he saw that it was rough and tanned and very human. Detective Tamura. 

"Sumeragi!" The detective sounded frantic as he hauled Subaru all the way onto solid ground.

Subaru tried to say that he was fine, tried to explain what he'd seen, but the darkness--hadn't it been afternoon still?--closed in on him, and he knew nothing more. 

\--

"A foreign spirit? That's very unusual. I wonder if a normal exorcism will work on her." Seishiro cocked his head to the side, eyes going distant and thoughtful behind his glasses. His coffee steamed untouched on the table in front of him, ignored in favour of the puzzling case. 

"I'd rather not try and have it backfire. I need to figure out exactly what she is. She's not entirely spirit, but I don't know anything about what kind of entity she might be." Subaru huffed, chin resting on one gloved hand. "I'll have to see what the library has on foreign folktales, but that doesn't narrow it down much."

Hokuto placed a second steaming mug in front of Subaru, a curious look on her face. "Is it that unusual to see a foreigner become a ghost? There's so many of them in Tokyo."

"I've only dealt with a few, and they've been the ordinary sort of spirits, a bit lost but ready to move on with just a little push. This kind of power comes from a deep-seated grudge, but the form it's taken is so different. She's already killed, I don't know if there's much left beyond the grudge..." Subaru trailed off, rubbing his eyes. His vision was flickering in a weird way, like another image was trying to superimpose itself on what he was seeing.

Leaning against the counter, Hokuto sipped at her own coffee. "I'm not sure it's as complicated as you're making it. You've cleansed grudges and curses before." 

Subaru's vision flickered again, and an empty mug sat on the counter, a lipstick print vivid on the rim. He'd never washed it, because...

"It takes a great deal of study and work to mesh different magic systems. I think you're right to be cautious, in that sense. But you should be able to communicate with her, at least. That's somewhere to start. From a safer distance." Seishiro frowned at Subaru, worry writ large across his face. "You can't put yourself at risk like that. After all,"

Another flicker, and Seishiro took Subaru's bare hand in his, thumb tracing the inverted pentagram on the back. The smile on his face was sardonic, now, and it didn't reach those empty eyes. "It's not like you have me to protect you anymore."

Subaru pushed back from the table, yanking his hand free of Seishiro's as his chair toppled over behind him. An ofuda was in his hand before he knew what he was doing, but Seishiro deflected the spell with a twitch of his fingers. 

"That's hardly a way to treat a guest." Seishiro gestured with his cigarette, and the apartment around them disappeared into that black void Subaru remembered all too well. The tree appeared behind him, and again he looked down at Subaru curiously. "Really, inviting me in at a time like this. I wonder about your self-preservation instinct sometimes. Has it not improved at all?"

It wasn't possible for Seishiro to be here. After all that searching, never catching up to him, always a step behind, there was no way. It was only another dream. 

It shouldn't hurt that it was only a dream. 

But if it was a dream, it was his dream. The void around them melted back into his apartment. The cherry tree remained, stubbornly resistant to his will, incongruously growing out of the middle of his kitchen floor.

Seishiro plucked a cherry blossom out of Subaru's hair, suddenly just there, close enough to touch. Subaru raised a hand, but he couldn't remember the spell he wanted to cast. Again, Seishiro took his hand and turned it over to bare his mark on the back. "You don't wear the gloves anymore."

"They didn't work, there's no point." He knew that wasn't why, not really. Because it was a dream Seishiro knew it too, and just smiled at him in amusement. 

"You wonder why I never came back to kill you, though you're still marked as my prey."

"I know why." Subaru didn't bother to pull his hand free, stepping in closer instead. "I'm right here. But you can't be bothered."

"Is that why? I wonder." Seishiro brought the back of Subaru's hand to his lips, tracing the star with the tip of his tongue. 

It was the answer Subaru wanted to hear--that there was another reason, that it wasn't only that he'd already lost and become uninteresting. Even in a dream, it wasn't an answer he believed.

"Do you want me to lie to you again? Tell you that I love you? That you won the bet?" Seishiro snaked an arm around Subaru's back, pulling him flush against his body. "What exactly do you think is going to happen if you catch up to me?"

That wasn't what he wanted. Not in the waking world. But the words wouldn't come. He couldn't go back, he couldn't forget. Not even in a dream. But he couldn't say no, either--he _wanted_ to be able to embrace the lie, even for a moment.

He closed his eyes and felt Seishiro's lips on his. He tasted cigarettes and the copper tang of blood as Seishiro's teeth closed on his lower lip--there was nothing of the sweet lie in the kiss, only pain and desperation, and he leaned into every moment of it.

And with that, the dream broke around him.

\--

Subaru sat up, panting, the scent of cigarettes and cherry blossoms heavy in his nose. The room tilted around him and he laid back on the pillows, coughing convulsively. 

The spasm passed, slowly, and Subaru was able to sit up again. He was alone in a room he didn't recognise. It didn't quite look like a hotel--more like an apartment, if a very basic one with nothing in the way of personal touches. Not that he could judge on that front, not anymore.

He felt like absolute garbage. His head pounded, his chest ached. 

(Like he'd been kicked over and over until he coughed blood).

Everything was just a little distant, a little _off_ , and Subaru suspected he had a fever. No wonder he'd dreamed... that. Gingerly, he swung his legs over the edge of the bed and tested his ability to stand. The room didn't spin around him again, and if his knees were a little wobbly at first it passed quickly enough. He was fine, more or less--just a bit sick, nothing he hadn't worked through before. 

It wasn't hard to find his way to the bathroom in the small apartment. Subaru felt a little uncomfortable simply using someone else's things--he had no idea whose, none of the rest of the small 1DK apartment was any more homey or personable than the bedroom had been--but it was a bit late for that, given that the thin under-kimono he was wearing wasn't his. (He hadn't packed a change of clothes, not planning to be here overnight. This was obviously an oversight, but compared to all the other ways he'd messed this up it was pretty minor.)

There was a note on the bathroom door saying his clothes had been laundered and were waiting for him inside, and inviting him to make use of the facilities. It still felt strange, but with Subaru now at two nightmares and a near-drowning's worth of _ick_ to wash off, and thinking about that fact made his skin itch fiercely. 

The bathroom was as bare-bones and impersonal as the rest of the apartment, but it got the job done. Subaru elected to merely shower, again, though he was going to need a real bath to soak out these aches soon.

When he was done--clean and dressed and feeling more or less like a human being again--he exited the bathroom to find that Tamura was sitting at the kitchen table, waiting for him. 

"You look better than I expected. The doctors weren't thrilled with letting you go, but your grandmother insisted a hospital wasn't going to be restful for you."

No. Subaru did not do well with hospitals, anymore. 

At least the shower had sorted Subaru's head out enough that his manners were reasserting themselves. "I have to apologise for how much I've inconvenienced you." He bowed deeply, knowing that he had, undoubtedly, screwed this up very badly. He'd let guilt make him frantic, and there was no one to tell him 'no, this is a terrible idea' anymore. 

(Not that he'd ever been good at listening to Hokuto's sensible advice. But it had been good to have it.)

Tamura waved off the apology, clearly uncomfortable. "So, what's the next step?"

Subaru appreciated that Tamura still believed there was a next step and hadn't decided to fire him. Grandmother had probably had something to do with that. "I got a good look at her, at least. I know how I want to proceed, but there's one thing that would help me a lot." He might never know _what_ she was, but who she was... that was more important, in the end. "Have any foreigners been among the suicides in that forest?"

Grimacing, Tamura looked down at the ashtray on the kitchen table, fingers twitching reflexively towards the pack of cigarettes just visible in his pocket. "That was some bad business. I guess it makes sense that it's her. But, look, however bad she had it, none of those men deserved to die."

"No. They didn't." That was going to be a sticking point. If it came down to it he would try to exorcise her, because she couldn't be allowed to continue. "What happened to her?"

Obviously, Tamura was reluctant to go into detail, but eventually he sighed and said, "A man brought her here--to Japan, I mean, this all happened a few towns over--with all kinds of promises. He was going to marry her, he loved her, the usual things a man tells a woman he wants. Got her pregnant. As soon as she started to show, he lost interest. Moved on to chasing after a local woman. Just completely abandoned her, didn't even buy her a plane ticket back home, where at least she might get help from her family. I didn't find out about it until after the fact, I'm not exactly up on all the gossip for the area, but anyone with sense could see how it was going to end. I don't know why she came to the forest to do it. Maybe it reminded her of home, I don't know. I don't even know exactly where she was from." 

"Do you know her name?"

The look on Tamura's face said that he didn't, and was a little ashamed of that fact. "I can find out, if you need it."

"I can do it without. I need an hour or so to make some preparations, then we can head out. In full daylight, this time."

Doubt flashed in Tamura's eyes, and Subaru couldn't blame him for that. But this time he would do it right. Something of what he was thinking must have shown on his face because Tamura nodded and got up. "I'll leave you to it, then. I'll be back in an hour."

Subaru didn't bother with the formal robes--looking at them now, they definitely wouldn't have fit right--focusing instead on the spells he would need. He prepared several ofuda with the most wide-ranging protective spells he could, in addition to the quick offensive spells he kept prepared at all times. He also made up some generalised exorcism spells--they wouldn't be as effective as anything specific, but he could pour brute strength into them to make up for that if he needed to. Finally, he checked and re-purified his ceremonial blade. The familiarity of the rituals grounded him even more than the shower had, and by the time the detective returned he was calm--he was as prepared as he could be without doing days or weeks of research that might yield no answers, anyway.

The detective gave him a bit of an odd look, but he didn't seem as doubtful anymore. "I take it you're ready? Then here we go again."

\--

At this time of day, the clearing was certainly better lit, but it didn't seem to improve the atmosphere of the place any. This time Subaru felt the spirit watching him, though she remained hidden in the lake as he set up his barriers--out of reach of the lake, but close enough to talk in a normal tone of voice. He could feel her attention on him, wary and curious and still so very, very angry, but he waited until he was done to speak. "Will you come out and talk with me?"

For a while he didn't think she would, that it was going to be a brute-force exorcism after all, but eventually she poked her head and shoulders out of the lake. "And why should I talk to you, _man_?" There was venom in the question, but it felt almost half-hearted to Subaru. He chose to take that as a good sign. 

"You let me go, that time."

She scowled at him, retreating a little into the lake. "And you came back. Armed." Looking around, her expression softened just a hair. "At least you left your police friend behind this time."

"You've killed. You tried to kill me. I'm not stupid." Subaru paused, rethought that. "I'm not always stupid. But you let me go."

Swimming in little circles, she didn't quite look at him. "Maybe you're more like me than like a man. Or I thought so. Maybe I was wrong."

Seishiro's face appeared in Subaru's mind, unbidden--first the smiling, kind Seishiro he'd known for a year, and then the true face he'd seen only once in reality, but could never forget. 

"You still love him. Despite what he did to you."

Silence. She stopped swimming and shot him a hateful glare, then shrugged stiffly. "So. We're both fools."

That was a generous description, in Subaru's case, but he didn't think playing Worst Boyfriend Olympics with her was going to help the situation. "Maybe so. But we are different, too. You know that."

She looked at him again, long and hard. "You won't kill, not even him?"

Subaru couldn't answer that. Didn't quite know the answer, himself. She snorted, but went very still, just watching him. 

"And, so? Will you tell me that they were innocent and didn't deserve it, but that you forgive me and that there must still be good in me so I should stop while I still have a soul?" She sneered at the words, but something in her eyes told Subaru that she wished they were true. 

_Do you want me to lie to you again?_

"It's not up to me to forgive you." He could only give her the truth. There was that much left of the person he'd been, before. "I can't promise you anything. I don't know what you believe happens after this. But I can't let you continue. I'd rather you choose it, yourself. I believe that has to count for something. And I don't think that killing any of those men actually made you feel better, anyway." 

That gave her pause. She emerged from the water a little more, resting her arms on the edge of the lake. "He never comes here. Maybe killing _him_ would make me feel better. But he doesn't come."

"He won't." 

The look she gave him then was almost pitying. "No, he won't, will he?" She put her head down on her crossed arms. "I really am very tired. Aren't you?"

"Yes." He'd promised himself he'd give her only the truth. "But I can't stop chasing him."

_What exactly do you think is going to happen if you catch up to me?_

She closed her eyes and sighed. "I hope it's everything you wish for when you catch him. But I don't think it will be."

Without giving him time to reply, she faded away into nothing. 

The oppressive feeling lifted from the clearing, and Subaru knew she was truly gone. He levered himself to his feet, the time spent kneeling on the ground not having improved his condition any. Every time he bent over to remove one of the ofuda he'd placed, his head swam a little. Had his fever worsened?

By the time he made it back to where Tamura waited--within earshot of a shout, but not close enough to have heard the conversation, thankfully--Subaru was feeling well and truly sick again. "She's gone."

"Just like that?" Tamura sounded almost disappointed. Maybe he'd expected something flashier. Subaru thought it was just as well he hadn't had to resort to that--he felt emotionally hollowed out and physically drained as it was. Tamura took a closer look at him and must have seen some of that exhaustion, because his expression shifted to worry. "Okay, maybe it wasn't all that easy. Do you need to crash at my place again for the night?"

Subaru shook his head. "I just want to get home." And it was the truth. He could get an ekiben, eat on the train, and be home by evening. He'd been away from Tokyo for too long already. Whatever Grandmother had hoped to accomplish by getting him out of the city hadn't happened--he needed to go back. And maybe he would be more careful about how caught up in the hunt he got, but he wouldn't stop. 

It wasn't quite as easy to get back to Tokyo as he'd hoped--he just barely made the last train, had had to run for it, in fact. That definitely didn't make him feel any better, and by the time he found his seat he was wheezing a little. 

Without even case notes to distract him this time, Subaru was asleep before the train even finished pulling out of the station. 

\--

He knew it was a dream from the start this time, and it hurt his heart to feel Hokuto's arms around his shoulders. 

"I can't believe you did that! You could have died!"

Leaning back into her, Subaru didn't look at the other person in the room. Not yet. "I'm okay, though. You don't have to worry."

A slender hand pressed against his forehead. "You still have a fever. It's my right as your sister to worry about you."

"I know. Thank you, for always worrying about me." Even if it led to things he never would have chosen. He couldn't blame her for that, had never blamed her for that. He could have stopped it, if he hadn't let himself get so lost.

Hokuto gave him a squeeze, a little too hard. "Well, I'll leave you two to some alone time. Don't do anything crazy, okay?" 

Making no promises, Subaru hugged her back with everything he had. "I love you, you know."

"Of course I do! I love you, too." Hokuto smiled at him, tears in her eyes, and waved a little as she faded from view. 

Subaru looked across the table at last, to Seishiro's smiling face. It was all wrong--the smile was the kind Seishiro's, the eyes the true Seishiro's. It was an unsettling mix.

"I can't say I'm glad about how you risked yourself to do it, but I'm glad for another case successfully cleared." Seishiro beamed at him, and Subaru had to look away. 

When he looked back, the incongruous traces of the false face were gone. "Is this better, then?"

Not really the word Subaru would have used, but it was _truer_ , at least. 

"I don't know what will happen when I catch you. I don't know what I want to happen."

Seishiro looked faintly surprised, at that. "No? You don't want to kill me? Revenge for your sister?"

"Maybe." Subaru was less sure about that with every week and month and year that passed. "I want this feeling to go away. Maybe that will do it." 

"Do you think you can?" Seishiro was behind him, then, a hand on the arm he'd broken. It ached, dully, the way it did when the rainy season came. 

Seishiro's breath was hot against Subaru's ear. "What do you want from me, Sumeragi Subaru?"

He wanted to forget. He wanted to be free. He wanted things he could never have. 

Breaking Seishiro's grip on his arm, Subaru turned to face him. No matter how he'd grown, he still had to look up to meet those mismatched eyes. Even here, in his own dream, there was no feeling in them. He searched for any trace that there had been truth in the lie, even a tiny grain of it. 

Nothing. He couldn't even lie to himself in a dream.

This time he was the one to initiate the kiss. It was as cold, as merciless as the last time--as the last dream. 

He pushed Seishiro down on his bed, and Seishiro let himself be pushed, looking up at Subaru with no trace of a smile now. There was only the faintest spark of interest in his eyes--a desire to see where this went more than a desire for Subaru. "Did you imagine this? When you knocked on the door, when you knew you loved me, were you imagining this? No, I don't think so. You were too innocent, then. Curious that you imagine it now."

What else could he do? No matter how many times that terrible day replayed in his mind, no matter how many times he watched Hokuto die, he never learned. He never stopped loving Seishiro. He would brand it on his heart, then, that Seishiro felt nothing for him. No matter what happened, Seishiro would feel nothing. 

(None of this was real. The Seishiro before him was only his own heart reflected back at him. But maybe if he couldn't even imagine Seishiro being moved to emotion, not even once, he could let go.)

Seishiro pulled him down onto the bed, his hands going to Subaru's bare hips. "So thin. Have you been eating enough?"

Straddling Seishiro's waist, Subaru looked down at him. Had he imagined this before? He could envision every inch of Seishiro so easily. His chest, muscled just so, his broad shoulders, the corded strength of his arms. His mind created scars--surely he had some, surely he hadn't come out of a life of such violence completely unscathed--and when he traced them with his fingertip they felt as real as anything Subaru had ever felt. 

"Well?" That smug smile. Subaru kissed him again, savagely, and when he pulled back there was blood on Seishiro's lips. Seishiro raised a hand, touched his lower lip. "So fierce."

The hand still on Subaru's hip snaked around his back and pulled him down, chest to chest with Seishiro. Seishiro brushed his bloody thumb over Subaru's lower lip, staining it crimson. He could taste the copper tang of it. 

"There's more to this than kissing. Or are you still so innocent?"

Subaru shook his head. How could he be? "You took that from me." 

That got a smile from Seishiro. Not one of the kind ones. "Have I? Is this not the first time after all?"

Sitting back up, Subaru felt himself flush red. In his own dream! Ridiculous. He could do this, he wasn't that naif 16-year-old anymore. He reached back, between Seishiro's legs, and wrapped a hand around his flaccid cock. Not even a little hard, and here Subaru was, straddling him, naked! 

(That that was the point of all this was getting lost, somehow.)

Seishiro hardened quickly in his hand, and Subaru faltered again. This dream was spiraling out of his conscious control and he wasn't at all sure what he was doing anymore. But like the other dream, this had its own momentum, and he didn't know how to stop it. He raised himself and shifted back, lowering himself onto Seishiro's cock. 

It was Subaru who made a low, inarticulate noise at the feel of it, but he could hear Seishiro's breath hitch, too. No man was immune to physical sensation. That's all it was, and he looked to Seishiro's eyes for confirmation. Icy, empty of anything even as he gripped Subaru's hips hard--hard enough to bruise, another set of marks left on Subaru's skin. 

There was nothing gentle, nothing resembling lovemaking, in what happened next. Seishiro kept that iron grip on his hips and thrust into him, setting a pace that left Subaru breathless and floundering. He tried to get control back, but could only clutch at Seishiro's hands and hang on. 

Time seemed to slow, and the vividness of the scene felt seared into Subaru's memory. A bead of sweat trickled down Seishiro's temple, and his pale skin was suffused with pink. Seishiro's muscles flexed and tightened under Subaru, each movement of his hips sending a wave of pleasure through him. Subaru's hands trembled and he let go of Seishiro's, pulling away like Seishiro's skin had burned him. Hopeless, in this dream, to imagine that Seishiro wouldn't have noticed. His gaze flicked to Subaru's face for a moment, his smile cold and knowing. 

Impossibly, Seishiro increased the depth of his thrusts and started to vary his pace. When Subaru thought he had himself under control, Seishiro would move faster, or slower, never letting him catch his breath or find a rhythm to match. 

"You set the rules and you're still losing the game." 

Subaru wasn't sure if Seishiro actually said it, or if Subaru only thought it to himself. He was making noises he didn't even know he could make, cries and moans and sharp little gasps as Seishiro wrung sensation after sensation out of him. 

Even a dream had to end.

The orgasm shook Subaru to his core, and the dream started to unravel around him. Seishiro stilled beneath him, not even breathing hard, and his faintly amused smile was the last thing Subaru saw before it all slipped away from him.

\--

For the third time in only two days, Subaru woke with a jerk and a gasp of pain. His heart hammered in his chest, and it took a long moment before he remembered where he was. 

The train was nearly empty, but there was an awkward tension in the air that told Subaru he had not dreamed silently, this time. He could only be glad that he had not, in fact, come in his pants. Sinking deeper into his seat, he covered his face with his hands. 

He was, as the spirit had so accurately put it, a fool. A foolish dream, indeed, that he could wipe Seishiro from his heart so easily. 

It was his own words that came to his memory unbidden, this time-- _"You still love him. Despite what he did to you."_

Hopelessly. Helplessly. 

_I hope it's everything you wish for when you catch him. But I don't think it will be._

No, he didn't think it would be, either. But still he would chase Seishiro, and someday he would catch him. And then, they would see if his wish could be granted, at the end. 

-fin-

**Author's Note:**

> When Subaru refers to the apartment as being a 1DK, he means it has 1 bedroom plus a dining/kitchen area--it's one of the ways apartments are listed in Japan, and is definitely on the small side.


End file.
